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Eleven books by a shoemaker of Görlitz who wrote, by his own account, because he could not help it. Ten of them stand here in the seventeenth-century English of John Sparrow, who translated Boehme within a generation of his death and whose prose is itself now four hundred years old; where that English has drifted out of reach, the facing pane carries a modern register — the same text with archaic inflection and spelling normalised by rule, never paraphrased. Nothing is reworded, and where no register appears beside a passage it is because the rules found nothing to change.
The eleventh book is not in English at all, and it is the reason this note exists.
Des trois principes de l'essence divine, printed at Paris in 1802, is the same work as Concerning the Three Principles of the Divine Essence, which stands here as the second book — the same twenty-seven chapters in the same order, opening `Du premier principe de l'essence divine` against Sparrow's `Of the first Principle of the Divine Essence`. Its translator was Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin, who gave the last years of his life to putting Boehme into French, and who has a shelf of his own in this Lycaeum.
That makes a closed circuit inside this archive, and it is worth naming plainly. Saint-Martin translates Boehme. La Iniciación, printed in Montevideo a hundred and forty years later, traces its own descent through Saint-Martin. A reader can therefore follow one thread from a German mystic of 1619, through the French philosopher who carried him into another language, to a Spanish-language monthly of the 1940s that claimed them both — and read every step of it in the original.
The two are shelved as one work rather than two because that is what they are. They are not set as facing panes: an English translation of 1619 and a French translation of 1802 are two independent readings of a lost German original, and pairing them line by line would assert a correspondence neither translator ever claimed.
1THE Simple says, God made all things out of nothing ; but he knows not God, neither does he know what he himself is. When he beholds the earth together with the deep above the earth, he thinks verily all this is not God ; or else he thinks God is not there. He always imagines with himself that God dwells only above the azure heaven of the stars, and rules, as it were, by means of some spirit which goes forth from him into this world ; and that his body is not present here upon the earth or in the earth. Just such opinions and tenets I have read also in the books and writings of Doctors, and there are also very many opinions, disputations and controversies 4o CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 41 risen about this very thing among the Learned. But seeing God opens to me the gate of his Being in his great love, and remembers the covenants which he has with man, therefore I will faithfully and earnestly, according to my gifts, set wide open all the gates of God, so far as he will give me leave. It is not so to be understood, as that I am sufficient in these things, but only so far as I am able to comprehend. For the Being of God is like a wheel, wherein many wheels are made one in another, upwards, downwards, crossways, and yet continually turn all of them together.
2At which indeed, when a man beholds the wheel, he highly marvels, and cannot at once in its turning learn to conceive and apprehend it. But the more he beholds the wheel the more he learns its form ; and the more he learns the greater 42 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME longing he has towards the wheel, for he continually sees something that is more and more wonderful, so that a man can neither behold nor learn it enough. Thus I also. What I do not fully describe in one place concerning this great mystery, that you will find in another place ; and what I cannot describe here in regard of the greatness of this mystery and my incapacity, that you will find elsewhere. For here is the first sprouting or vegetation of this twig, which springs in its mother, and is as a child which is learning to walk and is not able to run apace at the first. Though the spirit sees the wheel and would fain comprehend its form in every place, yet it cannot do it exactly enough because of the turning of the wheel. But when it comes about that the spirit can see the first apprehended form again, then continually it learns more and more, and CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 43 always loves and delights in the wheel, and longs after it still more and more.
3Now observe : The earth has just such qualities and quality-expressing or fountain spirits as the deep above the earth, or as heaven has, and all of them together belong to one only body. The universal God is that one only body. But sin is the cause that thou dost not wholly see and know him. With and by sin thou, within this great divine body, liest shut up in the mortal flesh ; and the power and virtue of God is hidden from thee, even as the marrow in the bones is hidden from the flesh. But if thou in the spirit breakest through the death of the flesh, then thou seest the hidden God. For the mortal flesh belongs not to the moving of life, so it cannot receive or conceive the Life of the Light as proper to itself ; but the Life of the Light in God rises up in the flesh and generates to itself, from out of it, another, 44 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME a heavenly and living, body, which knows and understands the Light. The mortal body is but a husk from which the new body grows, as it is with a grain of wheat in the earth. The husk shall not rise and be living again, no more with the body than with the grain, but will remain for ever in death. Behold the mystery of the earth : as that brings forth so must thou bring forth. The earth is not that body which is brought forth, but is the mother of that body ; as also thy flesh is not the spirit but is the mother of the spirit.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
1THE Simple says, God made all things out of nothing ; but he knows not God, neither does he know what he himself is. When he beholds the earth together with the deep above the earth, he thinks verily all this is not God ; or else he thinks God is not there. He always imagines with himself that God dwells only above the azure heaven of the stars, and rules, as it were, by means of some spirit which goes forth from him into this world ; and that his body is not present here upon the earth or in the earth. Just such opinions and tenets I have read also in the books and writings of Doctors, and there are also very many opinions, disputations and controversies 4o CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 41 risen about this very thing among the Learned. But seeing God opens to me the gate of his Being in his great love, and remembers the covenants which he has with man, therefore I will faithfully and earnestly, according to my gifts, set wide open all the gates of God, so far as he will give me leave. It is not so to be understood, as that I am sufficient in these things, but only so far as I am able to comprehend. For the Being of God is like a wheel, wherein many wheels are made one in another, upwards, downwards, crossways, and yet continually turn all of them together.
2At which indeed, when a man beholds the wheel, he highly marvels, and cannot at once in its turning learn to conceive and apprehend it. But the more he beholds the wheel the more he learns its form ; and the more he learns the greater 42 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME longing he has towards the wheel, for he continually sees something that is more and more wonderful, so that a man can neither behold nor learn it enough. Thus I also. What I do not fully describe in one place concerning this great mystery, that you will find in another place ; and what I cannot describe here in regard of the greatness of this mystery and my incapacity, that you will find elsewhere. For here is the first sprouting or vegetation of this twig, which springs in its mother, and is as a child which is learning to walk and is not able to run apace at the first. Though the spirit sees the wheel and would fain comprehend its form in every place, yet it cannot do it exactly enough because of the turning of the wheel. But when it comes about that the spirit can see the first apprehended form again, then continually it learns more and more, and CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME 43 always loves and delights in the wheel, and longs after it still more and more.
3Now observe : The earth has just such qualities and quality-expressing or fountain spirits as the deep above the earth, or as heaven has, and all of them together belong to one only body. The universal God is that one only body. But sin is the cause that thou dost not wholly see and know him. With and by sin thou, within this great divine body, liest shut up in the mortal flesh ; and the power and virtue of God is hidden from thee, even as the marrow in the bones is hidden from the flesh. But if thou in the spirit breakest through the death of the flesh, then thou seest the hidden God. For the mortal flesh belongs not to the moving of life, so it cannot receive or conceive the Life of the Light as proper to itself ; but the Life of the Light in God rises up in the flesh and generates to itself, from out of it, another, 44 CONFESSIONS OF JACOB BOEHME a heavenly and living, body, which knows and understands the Light. The mortal body is but a husk from which the new body grows, as it is with a grain of wheat in the earth. The husk shall not rise and be living again, no more with the body than with the grain, but will remain for ever in death. Behold the mystery of the earth : as that brings forth so must thou bring forth. The earth is not that body which is brought forth, but is the mother of that body ; as also thy flesh is not the spirit but is the mother of the spirit.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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